ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—Teams shopping for a center fielder this winter will have no shortage of options. There’ll be the uber-gifted (and ultra-expensive) Josh Hamilton. There’ll be the super-speedy Michael Bourn. There’ll be the experienced winner, Shane Victorino.

And there’ll be the perpetually enigmatic, B.J. Upton. None of the above—no one in the game, in fact—can make baseball look any easier than Upton, as he showed Sunday afternoon when he hit three no-doubt-about-’em home runs in a 6-0 Tampa Bay Rays victory over Hamilton’s Texas Rangers.

Yet none of the above—perhaps no one in the game—are considered to be such an underachiever as Upton, the Rays’ 28-year-old center fielder. Since 2008, when he hit seven homers and drove in 15 runs in his first seven postseason games, baseball has been waiting for Upton to step up to superstardom. But in the past four years, he’s never hit higher than .252, his average so far this season. He’s never posted better than a .331 OBP. He’s never slugged higher than .429.

Maybe he’s just not as good as we thought.

Maybe he just doesn’t care enough.

I was talking to a longtime scout on Sunday morning, coincidentally about Upton, and he said, “We’re all smitten by talent, and rightfully so. But talent isn’t enough.”

The scout was referring in part to a play that Upton did not make Saturday night on a drive to the deepest part of center field. The ball went for a double that resulted in the decisive run in an extra-inning loss for the Rays. On one hand, it would have been a highlight-type catch. On the other, it was a play that elite center fielders make regularly. “That play deserved a better effort,” the scout said.

This is where the enigma part comes in. I thought Upton made a gallant-enough attempt but slightly misjudged the flight of the ball. But this scout—as have fans for years in Tampa Bay—sees the long, graceful strides and believes Upton could have—should have—done more.

”Guys like him that are really good have this effortless way of doing things sometimes that is misinterpreted,” Rays manager Joe Maddon said, defending his player.

But Maddon knows why Upton has been such a target of criticism. The skipper has had his run-ins with Upton, some of them stemming from questionable efforts.

While discussing Upton’s big day, Maddon talked about Upton’s history of shining in the stretch. Coming up big when it counts the most is great, of course, but to say, “He enjoys this time of year” somehow implies that the rest of the season isn’t worthy of total focus.

To his credit, Upton says his late-season surges are a result of finding his groove at the right time. “I try not to get too up or too down, just try to stay even keel,” he said. “It’s just a coincidence that it always happens to be September.”

The Rays will take his hot streaks when they can get them, especially as they are battling for a playoff spot. Maddon offered another reason that Upton could stay on this latest run, which includes five homers and a .440 batting average in his past eight games.

When Upton’s first homer—on the first pitch he saw—was shot to the opposite field, Maddon smiled. “The right-central stroke was beautiful,” Maddon said. “The ball came off the bat so hot. He still is a kid but when he was a kid-kid, that’s what he used to do—drive the ball to that gap like that.”

”Out of the three, that’s the one that felt the best,” Upton said. “If I can hit the ball the other way, I know I’m going good. I hit a ball pretty hard to the right side (Saturday) night and that kind of gave me a little something.”

So why doesn’t he do it all the time? “Him and (hitting coach Derek) Shelton have been talking about it a lot,” Maddon said. “I actually believe this surge you see him on now began with him starting to accept the other side of the field. Once he started doing that, then all of a sudden he started to hit the ball well again.”

Upton, the third Rays player to have a three-homer game, had one chance for a fourth homer when he batted in the eighth. “They were talking to me in the dugout but I was just trying to get another base hit,” he said.

But he grounded to third, and broke his bat. “That I wasn’t too happy about,” he said. “The bat itself had a great day, so it died a soldier.”

The man swinging the bat had a great day, too. “If he’s able to maintain that kind of direction, there’s no telling what he’s going to do the last couple of weeks of the season,” Maddon said.

He did not sound particularly confident that Upton would, though. After all these years, the manager knows better than to count too much on an enigma.